Dangerous Game
by Morgana Maeve
Summary: [Axel.Roxas][OneShot][A.U.] In life, some chances are meant to be taken, even if it means getting burned.


Dangerous Game

Morgana Maeve

You know that game they play at weddings with the bouquet and garter? Welcome to the plot of the pointless one-shot.

Rating – M for Mature because of alcohol use, implied Yaoi, and a garter. Yep, you heard me. A garter. Just one.

Pairing – AkuRoku or Axel/Roxas

Disclaimer: I lay no claim to Axel or Roxas, and thank Square Enix for creating such vivid characters to play with. Disney can rot.

(000)

It's a small wedding in an unimportant place. There's no fancy ice swan or buckets of champagne; only kegs and kegs of beer line the walls and sit on rotten wood tables, chilled by buckets of ice, warmed by hands. The priest has come and gone, finished his duty, and once paid, disappeared into the night, back to civilization.

Inside, the wedding caries on.

Blonde hair and blue eyes sit in a corner, there for a distant relative.

Red hair and green eyes guard a beer keg, there because he has to be.

Time goes on, and the beer kegs become lighter and lighter, and the guests drunker and drunker. The bride downs her last bit of drink, and in inebriated delight, throws her bouquet across the room in wild abandonment. As it sails through the air, tipsy and more women make grabs for it, falling over chairs, shoes, dresses, and each other.

The bouquet flies on, unimpeded.

It hits the wall in an explosion of white petals and ribbon, and stunned, it drops onto Roxas's lap. Blue eyes look up, bleary from sleep and beer, as laughter explodes around him. He stares as the bouquet in horrified confusion as women garble their words in giggles, and men snicker and pat him on the back, hearty slaps made heavy from alcohol.

He holds the mangled bouquet in his hand, and unwilling to associate himself with it, lets it droop near the floor.

Catching on to the revelry, the groom spirits his wife into a chair and dives under her dress. She laughs in amusement and delight as he reemerges from under the sea of white, a lacy garter held triumphantly in his teeth. Men whistle and women holler.

Roxas has already stepped outside, seeking fresh air in the night, away from the drunken pleasures of the room, the naked bouquet still in his hands. He wants to drop it, to leave it withering on the floor, but he knows that stilettos and flat-heeled shoes will tear it up to nothing. So he holds onto it, keeping it safe for now.

Back inside, the groom clambers up on a table, upsetting glasses of beer and plates full of nachos and popcorn. The floor beneath him is barely recognizable under the muck of soggy food and alcohol. He lets out a raucous bellow and attempts to shoot the garter off his fingers like one would a rubber band. But his coordination is destroyed, and the garter merely floats gently to the floor, soaking up the liquid and food particles there. Men fall to their knees, laughing and scrabbling with each other, the mess of the floor transferring to their inexpensive pants, but red hair and green eyes have been there first, and Axel rescues the lacy thing from its stinking grave.

It smells, so he digs out a glass of what he hopes is water and pours it on the garter. It lays plastered to the table.

Roxas has returned to the entrance, and as he stands in the doorway, drunken calls for whoever caught the bouquet resonate around him. The bouquet hanging limply in his hands gives him away. Drunken guest surround him, swarming from all over the room, pushing him into a chair, and then the chair is rising into the air, swaying precariously on several intoxicated hands. He holds on tight to the sides of the chair, the sad white bundle still in his grip. The swaying stops, and in a moment of breathlessness, the chair is back on the ground. He tries to get up, but hands hold him down.

In slurred shouts, somebody calls for the lucky fellow who's caught the garter. Green eyes meet the crowd gathered in the center of the room, and looks back to the garter, still wet, still stuck on the table. He peels it off and saunters to the center of the room, eyes now green fire, his mouth a predatory grin.

Blue eyes meet green fire in bafflement, and the green fire flickers and goes out before the embers rekindle and ignite again. The predatory smile on Axel's face widens ever so slightly, and Roxas starts to shake his head no. Laughter echoes around him, people tell him it's okay, to be cool.

The bouquet, the cause of this all, is still there, he realizes, and he clutches it tighter, as if it were a lifeline.

In Axel's hands, the garter sparks to life and grows warm.

Green eyes lock with blue eyes, and Roxas stares at him, unable to look away as Axel stares back at him, never breaking the invisible bond their eyes share even though Axel is beginning to kneel and Roxas is still sitting.

Axel holds up the garter on one finger and waggles it scandalously.

Roxas holds the bouquet tighter and begins to pray, never looking away from the green fire staring up at him.

Someone yells something drunkenly unintelligible and probably crude, and people laugh.

Axel brings the garter down and begins the difficult process of fitting it over Roxas's shoe. He realizes it won't fit, and in two fluid movements, has the shoe and sock off and onto the floor.

Roxas twitches from the cold and something else unfamiliar.

The garter is past his ankle and by his knee now.

Blue eyes stay connected with green ones. Axel is like fire, and as the garter slips up Roxas's thigh, fingers brush against his skin and Roxas can feel himself ignite, can feel the thin scorch marks left behind from underneath lean fingers.

Dimly, Roxas wonders how this hellfire apparition in front of him can fit his arm that far up his pant's leg, and then realizes he doesn't much care.

The garter stops moving, and Axel withdraws his hand, blinks, and the connection is lost. He gets up, his red hair sifting slightly, and with one final salacious grin, saunters away, taking a piece of Roxas with him, and leaving dying embers behind.

Without Axel's hand, the garter is wet and cold. The fire dies, and all that's left are burn marks snaking from his ankle to his thigh.

Blue eyes close in relief and loss, and the bouquet drops to the ground, finally dead.

The wedding ends, and the guests leave, soaked nachos and swollen floorboards left to fester on their own. Roxas retires to a cheap little hotel with paper-thin walls in Room 165. Axel walks down to Room 160. In the narrow hallway, they meet, and on his thigh, the forgotten garter springs to life, throbbing and hot, sending tendrils of fire up and down his body until he can barely stand.

Green eyes watch all of this, and Axel grins, leaning against the doorframe, watching as his abandoned embers boil into Roxas's blood, eradicating all other thoughts away until blue eyes can see only him.

Axel disappears into the darkness of Room 160, but the door still stands open, inviting Roxas into the unknown.

His blood is still boiling, and the garter's throb is more insistent than before.

Roxas looks to the open door of Room 160 and then looks to the closed door of Room 165. He knows that by staying in his own room, the chance will come and go, and he will remain the same person he always was. But the scorch marks would forever stay.

Or he can venture into the darkness of Room 160, into the place where green fire blazed somewhere, waiting for his decision. It will not wait long. He needs to decide, will he be consumed and be left with ashes, or will he not and be left with half-dead embers that can never be reignited nor put out altogether?

Blue eyes blink once, twice, three times.

The garter continues to throb in its own demanding tempo, fire dancing around it, flames licking his skin.

The open door beckons.

He takes one hesitant step and then decides, and takes another step until his walk is synchronized to the beat of the fire inside his body.

Later that night, as teeth replace hands and tear the garter away, neither one really cares about the paper-thin walls or the shouted complaints from the occupants in the rooms next to Room 160. There is fire to be quenched, and for the moment, that is all that exists.

(000)

Trying out new things, and not really liking new things that much. It seemed much more choppy than my usual style. Meh. Writing in present tense wasn't fun.

Too bad there's not a 'Disable Asinine Comments' on the settings. Seriously, act like an adult if you're one, and if you're not, try to be mature about expressing your feelings. My good friend read this over my shoulder while I was writing the first draft, and even though she's totally against Yaoi and the like, she still managed to say so politely, and I respected her even more for it. I don't really care if you don't like Yaoi, AkuRoku, or whathaveyou. If you don't like, refrain from commenting on it. And to those of you who did like it, I would really enjoy some feedback if possible, so please, read and review.


End file.
